Fort Geraniun

Tenth Chapter: Teacher

[Mariana von Ulysses’s Point of View]

Where to even begin? Let me tell you about a certain man named ‘Grandia Alcott’. He’s a magician by trade but by no means an ordinary one as he is the current holder of the prestigious, albeit unofficial, title of ‘Grand Magnus’… well, according to himself. It’s sort of like an urban legend amongst magic users as their ‘strongest’. As to the legitimacy of such a claim, I have yet to see even a shred of evidence that points in that direction.

That being said, he is certainly an accomplished magician, with deep and profound knowledge concerning matters magical in nature. Due to this, at the behest of my father he serves as my teacher in all things related to magic studies. Ever since coming to this world I’ve only ever met the man about two times but both times I was left with a severe sense of dissatisfaction. To put it bluntly, the man’s a clown- a complete buffoon. He rarely arrives on time, takes nothing with a smidgen of seriousness, his dressing sense needs a dire investigation and overall carries this lackluster aura about him. If this is what the top dog of the magician world is like than I’m severely disappointed.

It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that he was the catalyst. ‘Catalyst to what?’ you may ask and that’s towards the start of Mariana Von Ulysses’s delinquency, the ‘me’ before I regained my memories of my past life. Due to his rather shameful personality he became the single most influential figure that pushed the previous me away from the path of studying magic, nay, studying in general.

Yet now I am to meet that man face to face. Is there a worse nightmare?

“Yo~ Mariana!” a snaky voice came from my left shoulder. ‘Ah, I forgot there was,’ I thought to myself with a sigh.

“What is it?” I asked with a rather disinterested tone.

“Aww~ don’t tell me you’re already sick of your best pal?”

“No, it’s not you,” I shook my head. “It’s just that Grandia’s come to visit.” Although my intentions were to say this half in jest, for some reason Aegis responded with a sense of seriousness.

“That guy, he’s… well a little ‘eccentric’ but I think you should pay a little more attention to him.”

“Huh? Why?”

Aegis turned and gave me the most ominous smile as he shrugged with his wings as though they were arms. “Who knows? That guy is ‘interesting’.” That’s what he said but coming from the mouth of a being that could freely move through time, I could only wonder what lied in store for the future of my ‘esoteric’ teacher. However, even if he tells me such things there was nothing I could do now, thus I decided to put this little ‘advice’ at the back of my mind and proceeded downstairs.

“Ah… Lady Mariana, Mr. Alcott is here to see you,” Carol informed me with a clear distaste in her voice. It wasn’t much of a secret but she really didn’t like the man though she never acted on those feelings so nothing ever came of them. That being said, she tried to avoid spending as much time away from him as possible- can’t blame her for that, really.

Standing at our front gates with a clearly dissatisfied expression on her face, Carol ushered in my magic teacher. I couldn’t help but feel my own facial muscles contort into a sour expression as his figure entered my view. Am I seeing a prestigious magician or a homeless man?

His charcoal dyed hair grew past his shoulders, unkempt and unmaintained. I couldn’t see his eyes and half of his face as they were buried so thoroughly under the thicket of his hair. His garbs were a putrid grey colored robe, though fittingly it looked like what some wandering, homeless magician would wear. They’ve seen wear and tear with clumsily done patch work all over. Rather tall with lanky limbs, his overall frame could be easily seen through such thin robes. He appeared to be around his late twenties, about my age when I died.

Ladies and gentlemen, ‘this’ was the supposed ‘Grand Magnus’.

As I slowly made my descent through the stairs, he noticed my approach. Immediately the corners of his mouth perked up and with an overly disgusting smile he calls out, “Mari~!” His baggage dropped to the floor with a loud ‘thud’ as he rushed towards me with arms wide open. No hesitation, he tackled me down to the floor with a full body embrace- this was practically assault! Yet the fun didn’t stop there as he buried his unshaved face flatly onto my undeveloped chest as he rubbed against it furiously- disgusting!

“It’s been so long, I’ve missed you so much Mari!”

Ah, I forgot to mention one other thing, this guy is a hardcore lolicon. I shook my head and sighed. From my position I could see Carol’s face burning with enmity and the desire to kill, but she held it in the best she could as Grandia was a close friend of father’s, in other words he was an important VIP to the realm. So then, what about me? Why didn’t I do anything in retaliation to this obvious act of sexual harassment? That’s… well because I had a fleeting affection for him… that is to say my previous incarnation did.

Okay, long story short, the first time the previous me met with Grandia she thought he was really ‘cool’. However when she found out what his true character was like, she immediately felt betrayed and disappointed. That being said, such a strong initial impact doesn't just disappear from a person’s recent memory and I’m forced to carry that burden. I mean, I don’t really ‘hate’ the man; I only think he’s disgusting and a criminal waiting to happen.

“Ah… is that so?” I don’t even have the energy to reprimand him anymore.

“Mr. Alcott, I do not think you actions are really appropriate, therefore I suggest you cease at once.” Carol came to my rescue as she grabbed him firmly by the shoulder with an expression that suggested that he was no better than a bug to her.

“Geh! Old ha- I mean Carol! I- it’s so nice to see… you? Ow! Ow! Ow! Wait, stop! I’m sorry!” Based on the expression of pure excruciating pain painted on Grandia’s face I wouldn’t have been surprised if his collar blades just snapped right then and there. I had no idea that Carol held this much physical strength as she casually tossed Grandia to the side with a single hand.

“Lady Mariana, are you unhurt?” she rushed to check up on my physical condition.

“I’m fine, but the next time he does that I’m going to crush his… ahem, I’m fine Carol.” I smiled back.

“Umm, Mistress?” Uh oh, another prey has just stumbled upon this horrid scene. Concerned with what all that commotion was about, Charlotte comes to check up on the situation. Might I interject that the custom made maid uniform she was wearing was extremely adorable, so much so I started to suspect if I was a lolicon. I wanted to push her down and do horrible inappropriate things to her. Shit, I’m contracting a severe case of the ‘Grandias’.

I felt an incredibly unsafe aura leaking from my side. Grandia’s eyes were locked firmly onto Charlotte with that disgusting smile ever present on his face. Well, it’s not that I can’t understand, Charlotte is way too cute to be true but I think I should stop him. “Grandia, if you value your family jewels you’ll stop there,” I threatened him as I pointed to an extremely dark Carol who was polishing her knuckle dusters- wherever did she pull those from?

He threw up his hands and let out a defeated chuckle, “aha~ I don’t know what you’re talking about. I wasn’t going to do anything.”

“Right,” I sarcastically shook my head. “You may be a hopeless criminal but there are still limits.” I don’t know why but whenever I’m in the presence of this particular man I feel like my character just breaks down. Maybe since I’m always surrounded by passive types that usually listen to my whims I’ve become weak against more direct personalities? “Anyway, enough fun; you’re here to teach me right?”

***

We transitioned to our backyard where we have a wide open area to freely practice magic. Carol and Charlotte also tagged along with me in case something would go wrong. Though Charlotte in particular timidly hid behind my back. While Grandia was setting up his things to start the lesson, Carol leaned in and voiced disapproval about the man. “I do not understand why Lord Ulysses continues to keep around a criminal waiting to happen.”

I couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle at that. Carol has been rather candid with me lately about her feelings on particular issues. I liked to think that this was because she started to see me as my own individual woman, one that she could talk with as equals. The one thing I missed about my previous life was moments like these where I could talk freely with my friends about stuff. “A ‘criminal waiting to happen’ is he? I know he’s a little hard to understand, but he’s fundamentally a good person at heart. More importantly he’s actually quite a decent teacher.”

“M- Mari! I’m so happy that you thought so highly of me!” A big, dumb grin plastered all over his face he turned to me.

“Don’t get too carried away you criminal,” I reprimanded. Due to our close proximity in mental age I couldn’t really come to hate him to the same extent that Carol did. Disgusting as he may be, he never crosses a certain line and does understand social conventions, though he pushes against that boundary quite often.

***

“At its base, magic can be broken down into three fundamental elements. These three elements are what govern the function and type of magic that is being used: [Ice], [Fire] and [Lightning]. Each elemental attribute has their strength and weaknesses,” Grandia started to seriously explain the fundamental theories about magic, though if I had to say they all sounded like a delusional eighth grader’s ramblings. “For example, [Fire] magic is typically well known for being the most destructive and many of its spell variations have lasting burning effects. On the other hand, due to its notable area-wide effects it is inefficient to use in party combat situations.”

To go over it simply, [Fire] is wide and destructive but often times very uncontrollable unless well trained. [Ice] has a lot of malleability- can be shifted into many different forms- but is rather lackluster in terms of potency. [Lightning] is extremely fast to the point of unavoidability but requires a massive amount of mana to function. Of course, these assessments were only surface level observations but they are the typical attributes of each elements.

“All life in this world is born with a specific affinity to one of these three elements, although,” Grandia puffs out his chest with an arrogant smirk, “in very rare cases there have been notable individuals who posses two or even three close affinity. I have a particularly close affinity with [Fire] and [Lightning] magic.”

“Does that mean you cannot learn elemental spells outside of your affinity?” I asked, ignoring his personal gloating.

“Yes and no,” Grandia stretched out his arms and summoned three luminescent balls from his hands. They were the absolute base level spells of each element, [Fire bolt], [Ice bolt] and [lightning bolt]. “As you can see, it is possible to use spells that are outside of your affinity however they are limited to low level spells. High ranked spells can only be accessed if you have the corresponding elemental affinity.”

Supposedly magic is ranked from 1 – 10, with 1 being the absolute base and 10 being the highest possible known magic spell. That being said, even if I explained it like that no one from my previous world would grasp the concept so easily. Simply put, a rank 1 magic is like being kicked by a karate master while a rank 10 magic is like being run over by a bullet train. Though the lethality of these spells vary between people depending on training, potency, mastery and how much magic resistance a defender posses against each element. With a high enough magic defense it possible to survive almost all magic rank 5 or lower, but anything higher… well no one’s tested anything higher than rank 5.

Luckily the numbers of people who possess magic spells that are rank 5 or over are lower than 0.01%. Those who can wield magic over rank 7 are heroes of legend and rank 10 magic is usually reserved to deity-level figures and gods. Most people would be lucky if they managed to learn any magic over rank 3, even rank 5 would be considered a genius.

“Now then, why don’t we test your affinity, Mari?” Grandia dug into his bag to pull out a small white crystal orb.

“What’s that?” I asked as I studied the artifact carefully.

“It’s a magic sensitive crystal. It will glow in the same color as your elemental affinity just by applying a bit of your mana into it. Case in point,” the orb in Grandia’s hand started to shine softly as two different colors mixed. Red signifying [Fire] and yellow to represent [Lightning], they two colors entwined as they danced for a bit until they ultimately fused into a kaleidoscope of brilliant orange. “Like so. Here, try it.”

He handed the orb over to me. As I carefully followed Grandia’s instructions on how to pour mana, my heart beat rapidly. A wondrous dance of blue swirled around the inner portion of the crystal ball. “Blue… so that’s [ice]? Is my affinity [Ice]?” I asked.

“Yes, that seems to be the case.” Incidentally, for some reason there has always been an equal spread of the elemental affinity towards the general populace of this world. This means that at every point in time, with some minor fluctuations, each element will encompass 33.3% of the population. “The power of [Ice] type magic is rather weak but at the same time its unique property allows the user all manner of creative methods of attack. In summary, the potency of this magic is dependent not on destructive potential but the user’s imagination.”

“Hmm, I see. Want to try?” I passed the orb to Charlotte next since I doubt she ever participated in this kind of experiment as a slave.

“E- eh me?! I don’t know…” she replied meekly.

“Just try it, it’ll be fun,” I casually tossed the seemingly expensive crystal ball over the Charlotte.

“O- okay…” following my example Charlotte injected some of her mana into the orb. Upon doing so an extremely bright flash had temporarily blinded all of us. It took a moment for me to regain my vision but when I did so what I saw next shocked me. The color of the orb in Charlotte’s hand glowed with not any color but white.

“What… element is that?” I asked.

“That's… a ‘composite mage’…!!” Grandia’s jaw dropped to the floor.

“A what?”

“A composite magician, if I remember correctly refers to a person who is blessed with an affinity to all three elements,” the person to answer my question was Carol. “In other words Charlotte’s magical potential is on par with those ‘Heroes’ of legends.”